"That's the way with them all here, from the housekeeper down," she went on gloomily. "They take advantage of the fact that the mistress of the house is abroad and the master absorbed and busy." Her voice quickened sharply: "Then do you think they care two pins about the authority of a silly girl who has been allowed to grow up untrained and ignorant of the first a b c of anything practical?" I felt my face tingling. "See here--Oh, dash it all!" I protested. "That's not _fair_, you know!" "Fair?" She bit the word out of the air and just glared at me. "Why, they know she's a _fool_!" I opened my mouth two or three times; then swallowed helplessly and grew red. Somehow, it came back to me--a time when I was a little boy and my nurse had been so shocked when I said "shucks!" I remembered how that night she read to me a tract about swear words and told me how when I grew up to be a big man, I would have to choose whether I was ever going to learn to swear or not. She said that if I didn't choose right, a day would come when I would be--oh, _so_ sorry! And now, dash it, the day had come and I knew that she was right! For I _was_ sorry, by Jove! CHAPTER XXIII A MESSAGE AND A WARNING "It's all right, miss," Wilkes reported; "at least, I hope so. Perkins is with him--we've been trying to persuade him to have a bath and lie down. But I don't know--" He shook his head gloomily, then turned to me. "If you will come with me, sir--" Then he added, and it seemed a question: "You must have made a quick run, sir. Seems like only a few minutes since we got Mr. Jack's 'phone message." His voice dropped: "From the station house, you know." "Eh--what's that?" I paused with my foot on the first tread of the stairway. "Jack's 'phone message--from the station house?" I repeated blankly. "What are you talking about?" Wilkes coughed reproachfully. "Why, you know, sir, he told about being arrested in front of the Kahoka Apartments. He mentioned that it was about--h'm!" He stole a furtive backward glance at the frump, but she was enjoying herself berating a fat girl she addressed as "Flora." He looked at me eloquently and whispered: "About his--h'm--stealing some black silk pajamas." My monocle dropped, and I almost did myself. "By Jove!" I gasped feebly. "Yes, sir." Wilkes looked up at the paneled ceiling and stroked his chin. "He mentioned that they found them--or _thought_ they found them in the bag he had with him." "But he's got them _on_, and they are his own," I managed to get out. Wilkes' face lightened understandingly. "Oh-h, I _see_, sir," he said, nodding with his jolly chin hanging; "so _that's_ how you got him off--I was a-wondering!" He looked at me, his fishy old eyes twinkling admiration. "Very neat, if I may say, sir--making, as it were, a sort of alibi--_very_ neat, indeed! Of course, when they puts 'em on him, they see for themselves they are his'n, and not any lady's what had been stolen--Oh, _I_ see!"